Reuters to use robotic DSLRs for Olympics coverage

Two photographers for international news agency Reuters are taking robotically-controlled DSLRs to the London Olympics, which starts later this month. Fabrizio Bensch and Pawel Kopczynski are rigging the cameras into fully-articulating mounts, which they will be able to control remotely by computer, using a joystick. As well as camera orientation, they will also be able to zoom the lenses attached to the cameras and - of course - trigger exposure.

In the 19th Century, Reuters pioneered the use of telegraphy in news coverage. In a blog post on reuters.com, Bensch says that he and Kopczynski have been working on this new robotic technology since 2009, with the aim of 'making impossible things possible; just like the athletes at the Olympic games'. They've already trialed the robotic rigs at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea and at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Istanbul earlier this year.

all things could be easier with the use of newer technologies and knowledge and also with the practical use of knowledge, which is also great courage to be a traditional manufacturer to offer an innovative product of ordinary users who are accustomed to something ... the problem is that technical progress in all fields not as fast, so for example to USB 2.0, yet we will probably meet in the new cameras, etc.

probably would be a great difference if the only way to deal with a data transfer rate and shoot the image would be stored in performance data and computing systems, Google or IBM instead of the SD card and then processed up here ... true, they probably now don't have a dedicated graphics processor with photographic software for processing raw data from the sensor cameras ...

".....siri, can I get 12 frames of the girl, three close ups, shallow DOF, 5 mid lengths and 4 full lengths, darkish zone IV backgrounds with a warmish tone, and slightly high contrast...heck give me a set of BW variations like Corbijn...all at 6000 pix on the shortest side. i'll have a folder of 16 bit PSDs and one as JPGs...thanks....and don't forget the pizza order before the pizza delivery closes....BTW, make sure your facial recognition is set for mysterious, sensual...".....who knows?

Noting beats the real thing.. capturing the moment...feeling the excitement, hearing the roar as the competitors race to the finish line, with your finger on the trigger, bursting away dozens of shots, as the roar of the crowd drowns out out the shutter sound...capturing the moments of joy, sadness, tears of the winners and losers.. no robot cam can do that. Robotics is good if you can't physically be there yourself, but nothing beats the real thing. Good luck to them but I betcha, it will be the ones with their gear waiting patiently then pouncing to get the best shots. Speaking of lenses, take notice of how many Canon lenses are used over Nikon. Doesn't that tell you something? When I was a PJ at the Beijing Olympics, I saw more white lenses than black. I asked a guy who had five Canon lenses, why is Canon so popular. His reply was short and sweet: performance and sharpness.

Next thing will be inserting cameras into the balls and pucks and then attaching Hero cameras to the athleles. A few years from now all the spectators will be live-via-remote on their smart phones and the athletes will be competing in front of a hundred remote operated cameras. Pretty scary.

A couple of interesting thoughts... if you were to sync all the remote cameras at an event you could do some of those Matrix bullet-dodge sequences. You could also combine images taken from different points of view at the same time to compile image-overlay-3D models with 123D Catch. The images of the rigs is more interesting to me than the images of the events.

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

4) A robot photographer must argue ceaselessly on forums about the benefits and drawbacks of mirrorless cameras, whether Canon or Nikon is better, and whether pixel-peeping is a bad thing and robots should just get out there and take some damn pictures already, as long as such an action does not conflict with the First, Second or Third laws.

Chaotic scene today at the Men's 100-meter trials when three Canikon Mark25 airborne 4K vidcam drones collided in mid-air, falling onto pre-race favorite Usain Bolt (Jamaica) as he took his place in the starting blocks.

The 25-year-old Bolt, a three-time Olympic champion, was carried off the track on a stretcher as his teammates watched anxiously.

You're pretty mis-informed. Photographers have been shooting multiple cameras located in multiple locations, wirelessly, for years. Keep in mind that it still takes a human to set up all these cameras, and to trigger them at the right moment, just like it's always been. You also have to keep in mind that most of these cameras are positioned in locations where you couldn't put a human anyways! Do you really think that there are photographers hanging off the rafters, or tucked behind basketball backboards who are now going to be replaced by these remote cameras! LOL! No! These remote cameras now allow photographers to shoot from locations and at angles that would never accommodate a human being. The main difference, now, is that these cameras are now mounted on robotic mounts that allow panned/tilted movement to follow the action, whereas before they used to be stationary.

Also, you still need photogs onsite. Things can, and do, go wrong. These cameras are only a supplement.

If the image looks good, the format doesn't really matter. No one looks at a great sports image and says, "But was it shot in RAW?" LOL. Your statement is a clear sign that, for some people, photography is more about the technical rather than the artistic. It's like looking back at a great Cartier-Bresson image, and just complaining about the image grain.

Double amputee South African runner Oscar Pistorius, 25, will compete at London 2012 alongside athletes with no disability.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-05/blade-runner-to-make-olympic-history/4113226?section=sport

TV broadcasters have been using robotic cameras for several years now. E.g., there is no way you could get a camera and cameraman on a wire, panning across a sports field - at least, not safely and cost effectively, while it's quite common with remotely controlled cameras. It's a welcome evolution but, like all developments, it will have its downsides. For instance, cameras can take pictures really fast, but then photo editors are flooded with a constant stream of photographs and have to scramble to select the best ones, provide the metadata and send them to subscribers. The great danger is a gain in technical quality and wow factor, but a loss of editorial quality, as photographers have less time to work on the great picture, just snapping hundreds and counting on the editor to select the good one.

Amazing. Earlier, some clever invidual posted that the D800 had "spanked" the 5D3 and it crossed my mind that DPR might want to sponsor an event where cameras are attached to robots and they battle for supremacy. But the idea of cameras on robots seemed too silly....

<rant>Yawn, Another olympics story. Boring Boring BORING. Unfortunately I live in the UK where we're getting these dreary corporate games shoved down our throats every day, along with dismal tennis and cricket. It's a pity that this rubbish is even polluting DPReview.</rant>Must get out with my shiny new D800 more.

I've done alot of aerial photography from a helicopter and I've used a remote controled model helicopter. Actually going up in the helipcopter is way more fun than using the RC platform.

Making great pictures is only part of the reason I got into photography...the other is that the act of taking photographs is so much fun.

The willingness and ability to be in he right place at the right time is one of the reasons we are hired as photographers. But now they are going to hire a technician to mount the camera and the photographer does not even have to be on the scene to take the shot...he could be locked away in a mobile vehicle far away from the location like the TV crews.

Dvlee, have you in mind trying with a parrot AirDrone V2, this new model can record HD video and stills, may be not any good quality for your work, but hey, it is a great tool to add a flyby over the wedding inside the church or later on the meal passing along the tables.... would be very very funny to record it as it passes near the wow faces of the people!

Add the right program in the PC side and voila! You have cameras that detects action, follow and zoom on it, and fire automatically too in response to "visual events" (when the action pass this line, etc).

You have apps. for mobiles that make a shoot when it detects movement in some area of the frame, this is just more complex but same idea.

With 4K video cams,it's not necessary to take a picture at the decisive moment, a still quality high resolution image can be extracted from the video recording. The decisive moment will take place in the editing.

I don't even like to use fast frame rate on my DSLR...too much work downloading and editing. Imagine going through three seconds of action at 30 FPS???

You would use a different kind of program that plays through the video at any speed you want and when you found a good still image you can simply fine tune at slower speeds or even frame by frame to find the best one. Even if it is shot at 3000fps it will work just as well if the software is good and the hardware capable of driving it.

I think they discontinued it but the writing is on the wall. The type of photography where a photographer just takes a bunch of grab shots and then picks 5-10% best ones that "came out nice" can be replaced by a robot. It will be kind of like AE and AF - yes "we" can do better with manual control of them but not all of us all the time. If you pull together a fashion shoot and drive the artistic direction, that's one thing. If you just grab shots, you may find yourself replaced by a gizmo, which with each generation gets better and eventually becomes good enough for most viewers in most situations.

I can't wait for them to attach cameras to the athletes - it might slow 'em down a bit, but think about the possibilities. e.g. beach volleyball. What happens if two rival news agencies put robot cameras next to each other? Will they fight?

lol, made me laugh. but i hope you're kidding- maybe as a show game they could attach gopros, but definitely not DSLRs, and definitely not during olympic performances. i would hate to be an athlete training all my life just to have to perform less than my full potential just so people can get a new angle, even if everyone else has them on too.

Here I am reading about something that I was aspiring to become...a photographer for the Olympics...and now robots and computers come to replace me!...now all I really need is a robot to feed me Cheerios!

If you read the blog you'll see that these cameras are going to be positioned in places that human photographers would be unable to access. But kudos for twisting this into a 'cheap imports from China' story - I'm impressed ;)

That rail could have been a catwalk and someone could have worked directly from there. I feel sometimes that there is a gratuitous excess of technology being used for tasks that could be easily done by humans. But I guess it's easier for the photographer to sit at a chair and move a joystick than staying all day on the catwalk. Then they could remote control them from home and not even go to the games, FWIW...

Wow. Such overly negative reaction here. The robotics are not replacing anyone in this situation. The photog's job is still required for "creative" control. Maybe a catwalk would be too large, awkward or dangerous to the athletes in this instance. You could build a catwalk over top of an NFL playing field too but you still wouldn't get the pics or video that the SkyCam provides. I for one am curious to see what comes of this.

The reason the camera was installed in a robotic apparatus is to make the photographer have an advantage of another angle while shooting on another. A lot of sports photographers don't shoot just one or two cameras, but a lot of cameras with them. A lot of their buck-ups are placed in different positions and angle and are all fitted with wireless shutter release. The use of this robotic apparatus is to help a photographer to take more better photos and be more productive, not to become a lazy one and just sit and wait. Yes, we can put a photographer in a cat walk on top and shoot there, but, that's just it, only one angle and position.

@ Francesco - the only posts that have a 'reply' button are those that begin a comment thread. Me being an admin doesn't have anything to do with it - to identify who you're replying to, use '@ barney' or something similar :)

That thing is not to replace the photographer, but to give the photographer additional creative vantage point without the need to run to another position to shoot. Just like for sports photographers covering the foot ball, they remotely place a camera just behind the goal's net for a creative and additional vantage point.

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